The key to unlocking your potential
How many times have you had an idea of starting something: a new hobby, a new business, or just doing something extraordinary once? You’ve had the thought, processed it so you know you like the idea and would like to start. You are about to start, and suddenly you don’t want to do it anymore. “I’m busy right now,” “I have to do this and that,” or some other excuse comes out of your mouth. The main reason we don’t start is that we are afraid of failing. We are trying something completely new, and we don’t know how it’s going to end. But we shouldn’t be afraid of failure; we should get used to it. Because if you want to be successful, you’ll have to fail. A lot. I’m pretty sure at some point in your life you have (or will have) had an idea for a new kind of business. A business that would change the world. Make it a better place. But you were afraid. Afraid of failing, afraid of losing. I think the other problem is that we are just enough satisfied in our lives. You don’t love your job, but you are just enough satisfied so you don’t want to quit it to pursue the unknown. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with people who don’t want to leave their jobs. I’m fully okay with the fact that entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. Some people are happy with their 9-5, and that’s fully okay. Back to the thing I was talking about. We are just enough satisfied, so we don’t want to move, because that would change our level of satisfaction. If you’re stuck in the “good enough” phase, you’re stuck between something “not that bad” and “not that good either.” This is what I call the twilight zone, the place where your potential dies. The danger in this kills your desire to grow, to evolve, to create something meaningful because there is no driving force behind you. But for me, that was never the case. Yes, I do seek comfort and satisfaction sometimes, but I can identify those moments, and if I need to do something, I will do it. I like to seek discomfort. I like to shake my level of satisfaction for a time because I know it affects my future life. It makes it better. I make someone else’s life better. I like to jump into the unknown. Because I know that if I fall, I will get caught. In modern Western society, we all are supported by the welfare state. If we fall, we will get caught, and we will be handed the support needed. I don’t see any good reason not to follow my dreams because if I fail, I will start from the same level I was a year ago. When you let go of good enough, you can make room for greatness. So choose the discomfort, put yourself out there, and take a look at areas where you have been settled just because everything is good enough. It might temporarily cost you your comfort, your money, or even your sanity for a time, but this is the price of potential. I come from a pretty regular, middle-class family from Finland. I’ve never inherited money; we’ve never been rich. Yes, my parents have always supported me, paid for my hobbies, etc. But I can fairly say I’ve started from the average level. I’ve learned everything by myself, by being curious, by listening, and by wanting to make a change. Leave an impact. But at the start, you have to be naive. You don’t know what you don’t know. You have to think everything will get on track. You don’t want to complicate things; that will only cause trouble. At the start of building Miitti and pitching it to my friends and family, a lot of questions came up. “How will you develop a full app?”, “You will need money to build a business,” “You need this and that, you don’t have this.” Then I answered, okay, I don’t know how to code an app, but we will find someone. The app will be built on Flutter, so we need a Flutter developer. Let me see on LinkedIn if I have any developers on my connection list. And so on. I would simplify everything. The things we face are not that complicated because we choose to simplify them. The OG saying in the startup world goes: “Well, how do you eat an elephant? Take a bite at a time.” And it couldn’t be more true. “To invent, you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment,” said the founder of the trillion-dollar business, Jeff Bezos. At some point, there will come a couple of drawbacks, but if you are not failing, you are not trying. And if you are not trying, experimenting with something, you will never invent anything. And on your way to success, you will run into failure, and when something happens that you can’t control, there is nothing you can do about it - you’ll just have to gracefully accept it. Wake up the next day like nothing happened. Put it behind you. Pick yourself up and move on. But when you’re building or doing something no one’s ever done before, you have to understand the reasons why it hasn’t been done. Overcome the reasons, make the odds stack in your favor. Learn from others who have failed. In business, there is no reason to try to copy someone’s business. If you’re not trying to be different, they will take you out of business. And being different is not about just being cheaper, for example. If everything you got is to be cheaper, the big giants will just have to drop their prices for a moment, and you will be out. Well, the best way to figure out how to be different? Find a way to do something they can’t copy. And what’s one thing someone can’t copy? Making people feel a certain way. It is just like life with your loved one. There could be anyone outside your house, but if your loved one makes you feel loved and you are happy with them, you are not leaving. So make people feel your product or service. Because when we get emotionally attached to anything, it becomes super hard to leave it. You want to make it feel like a breakup for them if they leave.